eCite Digital Repository

Circe's new equipment

Citation

Abstract

In 2009 I spent some time in the Grand Rue slum of Port-au-Prince, Haiti with Atis Resistanz,
a community of artists who combine Vodou and sculpture in their artwork. Made from paraphernalia and trash, combining many elements to construct meaning, these Haitian makers seemed to me the final repository of the marvelous, the last possessors of the wand of the Greek goddess Circe.
Paraphernalia appears messy, futile or secondary; while in reality it reveals essential life processes. It puts us eye to eye with vital operations. The subordinate status of paraphernalia is significant, as the word is ultimately from Medieval Latin, where paraphernalia was the bride's property apart from her dowry, the separate or personal belongings and property of a married woman that she can dispose of by her own will. This includes; personal amulets, jewellery, personal menstruation items etc. Giving objects a re-newed meaning, extending the one for which they were originally intended, 'Art from Trash', is also a practice is quite common in Tasmania, however, for pragmatic recycle/reuse issues rather than necessity. However, what i'm interested in, is when paraphernalia becomes a sensitive object, a talisman that among other things, controls and triggers. Charms, of course, relate to a pact between a mortal and a deity. ‘Circe’s New Equipment’ explores the interrelationship between paraphernalia and unrelenting cultural concerns both embodying and critically resisting the dynamics of authoritarian structures. The embedded QR Code has a hidden double meaning. 'Buried treasure is hidden in caves at the centres of labyrinths.'